This year, Spar Conference generated
a lot of excitement and optimism, buoyed by new products and advances in the
field. Because there’s so much to talk about, and brevity suits us poorly, we’ll
be doing an upcoming series of what the key points outlined at the Spar
conference were, broken down into the following categories:

Augmented Reality

No longer just a buzzword, AR
workflows and consumer products are nearing developmental maturity. Tools like 3D
Laser Scanning and LiDAR mapping are providing the data needed to contextualize
and implement AR environments. On the other side of the coin, AR applications
are providing improved workflows and authoring abilities to make reality
capture a more intuitive and streamlined process.

Kinetic/Mobile/UAS Mapping

At this stage in the game, even the
measly 5 minutes or so it takes to capture a static scan are being edged out by
continuous or near-continuous workflows. Kinetic mapping utilizes IMU’s and control
points to capture large spaces not quite suited for a mobile mapping setup.
Mobile mapping continues to be refined and improved with revisions and upgrades
to the existing systems. And the FAA approval for UAS/UAV usage seems to be gaining
traction and becoming more feasible in the near future.

Point Clouds, in the Cloud

Remote facilities management and monitoring
is becoming more common as data becomes smaller in size and the infrastructure
for hosting and navigating point clouds rapidly improves. In addition to a CAD
deliverable, for example, many companies are providing Virtual Site Access by
default, as a means of giving a holistic deliverable to their end users. New
releases from software such as ReCap is prompting many companies to take their
point cloud data to the cloud.

Laser Scanning and BIM Standards

Industry standards are a
prerequisite in order for any development to occur. Finally, two important
documents are defining standards for data acquisition and deliverables. The
USIBD, with their Level of Accuracy protocol, have set up a universal system to
define sca

n data accuracy in the context of a RFP. The BIMForum has provided a
Level of Detail standard, a means of determining the acceptable amount of
detail to be found in any BIM or VDC document.

Adopt, Adapt, and Improve

Perhaps most importantly, many of
the Spar Presentations would at some point circle around the issue of how to actually incorporate new
technology, practices, and workflows into existing ones. Displaying brilliant
new technology is one thing, but the difficulties of properly using it are
often glossed over. Many of the featured talkers and companies at Spar seemed
keen to prime users for a new wave of 3D Reality Capture innovation.